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IN a previous blog post, I provided an account of the gang rape of Mukhtar Mai by four Mastoi clan members in Meerwala village in Pakistan. Here is a brief explanation of how her case was treated in the courts.

HI everyone. Rather than getting bogged down in an introductory post telling you all about myself, I would like to plunge right in. (Besides, you can read about me here.)

Last weekend, the Supreme Court in Pakistan upheld the ruling of the Lahore High Court and acquitted five of the six men previously convicted of gang raping Mukhtaran Mai. With this judgment, they took away hope from all the women in Pakistan who have been raped—and there are many—that one day their rapists will face justice.

TAKING the “History of Human Rights” course at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University has forced me to think about the freedoms we take for granted today. Being a member of the privileged elite in society, I didn’t stop to question the origins of these rights, what was sacrificed in order to obtain them, and how people lived before their rights were recognized.

Travelogues

When confronted by great white sharks a few feet away from our boat, jaws dropped open and a collective “wow” swept the onlookers. We forgot everything we had seen in scary movies and on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week and just stared.

One of the seven wonders of the modern world, the limestone structure that is the Kukulcán pyramid looms at the centre of the vast public ground in Chichén Itzá, the ancient Mayan city in the heartland of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

Most rapids seemed to be named after people who had died or were rescued at the last minute from a terrible fate. Maybe someone long ago had thought that it would add to the thrill of rafting down the river, but to me it seemed rather depressing. I shivered in the sunlight.

“Cookies for the survivors!” yelled Nelson cheerfully as we climbed up a muddy slope made slippery by the driving tropical rain. It was not the right sentiment to warm the hearts of the dozen or so tourists about to voluntarily zip from treetop to treetop 400ft above the ground.